Speaker A
Hi everybody. Today's Monday, August 3rd, 2026, and our dear friend Colonel Jacob is here with us. Welcome back, Colonel.
Col. Jacques Baud analyzes the migrant influx in Ceuta, Spain, European border policies, and geopolitical tensions involving Iran and the Middle East.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish territories not covered by Schengen, complicating migration control.
- European border policies are under strain due to large migrant movements and political disagreements.
- US political actions may indirectly influence migration crises in Europe.
- Middle Eastern conflicts remain volatile with Iran actively challenging US and allied interests.
- Diplomatic engagement is crucial to resolving ongoing regional tensions.
What the video covers
- Discussion on the sudden influx of 40-50,000 migrants into Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa, and the political pressure it caused in Europe.
- Explanation of the Schengen Agreement and how Ceuta and Melilla are excluded, affecting border control and migration policies.
- Analysis of Italy's reaction to the migrant situation and its temporary withdrawal from Schengen to control borders.
- Insight into Spain's legal framework regarding asylum seekers and recent laws allowing expulsion without due process under certain conditions.
- Speculation about possible US Republican involvement in funding Morocco, potentially linked to the migrant crisis in Ceuta.
- Broader geopolitical context including European leadership dynamics, especially left-wing governments' approach to immigration.
- Discussion on Middle Eastern conflicts, Iran's defiance of US policies, and the involvement of Kurdish forces trained by Western countries.
- Reflection on the complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the regional impact of US-Israel relations.
- Emphasis on the need for diplomatic solutions in the Middle East to prevent prolonged conflicts.
- Overview of strategic vulnerabilities in the region, including critical infrastructure like desalination stations.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview of Migrant Crisis in Ceuta
- 02:45Political Reactions and European Border Policies
- 06:29Details on Ceuta, Melilla, and Schengen Agreement
- 10:23Spain's Legal Framework on Asylum Seekers
- 14:05US Political Influence and Republican Involvement
- 18:03Broader Middle East Geopolitical Context
- 21:41Iran's Role and Regional Security Issues
- 25:21Conclusion: Need for Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Thank you, Nema. Thank you for having me again on your show.
Speaker A
Thank you. Happy to be there, Colonel.
Speaker A
Sorry for being late. It was my fault. I forgot, you know, there were some technical issues. Let's put it this way.
Speaker A
No problem. No problem. Carl, let me start with what has happened to Spain, which was so strange.
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All of a sudden, you see 40, 50,000 people flooding into Ceuta, which is part of Spain, and you see a lot of pressure coming from European leaders. If I put out, if I say one of them which was important, it was
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the leader of, you know, Italy, Meloni. She said that she's going to close the borders with Spain, and there is nothing between Spain and Italy, but after all, she was putting political pressure on Pedro, Pedro
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Sanchez in Spain, and you see a lot of pressure from other countries in Europe as well because they say the borders are open. They're not caring about the borders of Spain. That's going to influence immigration in Europe. And
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yesterday, we learned from Thomas Massie that two weeks before migrants from Morocco invaded Ceuta, the GOP passed a bill with 40 million for Morocco and a committee report. You know, you see the documents that he shared. And the other point was
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Marjorie Taylor Greene pointing out that Republicans paid 40 million of your tax dollars to Morocco to invade Spain.
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And the same day, I talked with Colonel Wilkerson and Larry Johnson. Both of them mentioned it's a CIA and MI6 operation. What is your understanding when it comes to Europe?
Speaker A
There were basically, you look at Donald Trump and his administration, it's all about controlling borders. But when it comes to Spain, you see these sorts of moves under part to diminish or to show that the leadership in Europe,
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particularly in Spain, is a left-wing leadership. They don't care about the borders. That's why you see these sorts of things happening. Your understanding of what has happened? Well, first of all, we have to understand probably for those in the United States or somewhere
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else in the world who don't understand exactly how this border issue works in Europe. In Europe, most of the countries are part of the so-called Schengen agreement, which essentially was a treaty that allows easier passage through the borders within
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Europe. For instance, if you go from Switzerland to France, even though Switzerland is not part of the EU, it is part of the Schengen agreement. Because you have this agreement, you don't have to show your passport. You can transit directly. The same with air
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flight, for instance, if you fly from Geneva to Brussels, you don't need to have your passport. I mean, you don't have to show your identity. For safety reasons, the company, the airline, may ask to verify the passport, but
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there's no official passport control, and that's why you can, in fact, travel from Portugal to Poland without crossing any border control. If you want, you cross borders, but you don't have any border controls, and the idea of Schengen
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is to have free passage within Europe. But on the outside of Europe, then you have control. You have border control, both customs and border control, meaning that if from the US you come
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into Europe, whatever country, or US or Brazil or wherever, if you come into Europe, you have to show your passport. Your ID and identity will be checked.
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But then once you land, for instance, in Paris, let's say, you can move to Berlin without showing your passport anymore because you are within this Schengen, I would say, safe area if you want. Now,
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if you take the example of Spain, Spain has two so-called exclaves in Ceuta and Melilla. These are the two exclaves that are located on the Mediterranean but on the Moroccan coast.
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And in that case, these migrants went en masse into Ceuta. Now, Ceuta and Melilla have a specific status.
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They are part of Spain but are not part of Schengen, meaning that if you go into Ceuta and then you travel to Spain, Spain being on the other side of the Mediterranean, it's just Ceuta is just
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in front, I mean, on the other side of Gibraltar, you know. Now, if you cross the Strait of Gibraltar to go into Spain, essentially you are not leaving Spain because you are from Ceuta to Spain, which
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belong to the same country, but there is an exception, and this exception was decided a long time ago to prevent such situations because Ceuta is not the first time that you have kind of a, that was smaller scale though before, but you
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had other cases where you had kind of invasion of African migrants hoping to be granted asylum status once they are in Ceuta.
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The thing is that, as I said, it is not part of Schengen, meaning that if you are in Ceuta, you are not at the end of the problem because if you go from Ceuta to Spain,
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then your ID will be checked. So in essence, it's not, I mean, it's a security issue, it's a spectacular issue and all that, but legally speaking, basically there's no change. If those guys land in
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Ceuta, then they have to travel to Spain, and if they take the ship, the boat to Spain, then in Spain, at the port, at the entrance port, their identity will be checked, and if they don't
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comply with regulation, then they will be expelled. So in essence, there's no problem. Therefore, the reaction of Italy is, in fact, exaggerated because what Italy essentially said is that by withdrawing or yes, withdrawing temporarily from Schengen,
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that means that Italy will be able to check its own borders. As I said, normally the borders that are controlled are under European control, and they are the outside borders of the EU, in our case excluding Ceuta and Melilla as
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an example. But you have also the same with some French overseas territories, for instance, that you have in the Pacific area and in the Indian Ocean and in the South
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American continent, and therefore these territories are also excluded from Schengen, as other countries. For instance, you have Cyprus. Cyprus is part of the EU but not part of Schengen also because there was this fear that these
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countries might be used as a kind of a Trojan horse to, or not a Trojan horse, this is not the right word. This would be to use this country as a bridgehead to make migrants enter into
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the EU. So in essence, it is spectacular. It is, I don't know exactly what the theory that the US or Republicans set up these things. I don't know exactly what they wanted to achieve
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because essentially these migrants are, if Spain doesn't want, there is no chance that they will reach Spain. The only thing that might be invoked in that situation, you mean the mainland because there is
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mainland. Exactly. Exactly. The only thing, because recently the Spanish Supreme Court legitimized a law that, or the parliament, sorry, adopted a law that, how to say, that prevents an asylum seeker who comes into
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Spain could be expelled without fair due process or fair trial if you want. So meaning that if you are there and you are without any ID papers or things like that, you can be retained, but you cannot
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be expelled back to your country of origin until you go into a trial that defines exactly your status, meaning that those people can stay. And if you take into account the delays and things like this in the legal procedure,
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that means you can stay here for maybe years legally if they want. So that may be one explanation what the Americans, if it's the case, in that case the Republicans anticipated that it
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could create a problem to Spain. But I think as far as I know, most of these migrants have been repelled and expelled from Ceuta and have turned back to Morocco.
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Um first of all in when when it comes to the Palestinian conflict, this is uh uh Spain has been one of the first European countries to recognize the Palestinians who recognized that Israel was committing war crime against the
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Palestinian population and uh they also took measures uh in in order to react to the um extending colonization of the West Bank.
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Uh, and Spain reacted in that sense to um decision of the International Court of Justice dating from July 2024 if I'm not wrong. And this decision uh asked all the countries of the world essentially to uh help Israel to vacate
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or to remove their um settlers from the West Bank and the occupied the Palestinian occupied territory essentially.
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And Spain in application to this rule of the international court of justice had decide decided some measures against the settlers and including the products from the uh the product made uh by Israel but in the uh uh Palestinian occupied
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territory. And for that reason uh you have Israel has got a very strong feeling about uh about Spain. And more recently in the conflict between the US and Iran, you may remember that Spain um for forbade the use of its territory of
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its airspace in order to prepare or participate to the operation against Iran. and that in essence uh uh forbade the the use of the US bases in uh in Spain.
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So uh for this reason the Donald Trump was quite angry at Spain and that may explain this uh this reaction which is in my view childish to be to be honest because I think this is the kind of game
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that doesn't bring anything. it just increased tensions and I'm not sure this is something that uh that should be in international relations again we are but it's an additional demonstration that in the current uh uh landscape or international landscape that we have
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we rely less and less on diplomacy and more and more on these tricks dirty tricks sanctions and uh and and even probably even more maybe some clandestine activities but in that case uh the case of Suta this is
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next to child game literally literally because I don't see the purpose of that uh of course it it feeds the narrative of the and I think there is also a post of Don Trump saying that well the issue
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the Republican could have managed the situation much better and things like that because obviously one of its main priorities in the US is the prevention of illegal immigration or even immigration at large and therefore this is a way also to
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to tease the EU. There is uh currently kind of tension between uh the United States, I mean Donald Trump in particular with and the EU especially because uh Donald Trump is very disappointed that the EU has not reacted to all its
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operation to open the threat of our moves and to act against Iran and because the European didn't want to be involved in this conflict uh donor Donald Trump has been felt that he was he was it was a kind of a treason by its NATO
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allies even if NATO doesn't apply to the Middle East. NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meaning that it essentially the NATO works in the North Atlantic area and not in other parts of the world. uh there was a kind of a
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stretch of language when it came to the involvement of NATO to Afghanistan but essentially NATO was not designed for that. It was not even designed to react to a terrorist attack as we had in uh in September 2001.
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But that was uh in the emotion of the moment they stretched the language for that. But essentially NATO is not designed to uh to uh engage in a war in other parts of the world than the North Atlantic area and certainly not when the
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the this NATO ally started the war. Again, the uh NATO was designed and of course may many people can discuss and argue about that but it was designed as a defensive organization meaning that if any European country would be attacked
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in that case by the Soviet Union or the Warso I mean the Warso pact didn't exist in 1949. The Warso pact was created almost five or six years later in 1955.
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But um but before that NATO didn't exist but sorry the the boss pack didn't exist and the fear was that the USSR could attack some country in Europe and that would be the case for NATO to engage.
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But in in Iran we have the opposite situation. We have a NATO country namely the US which attacks a third party which is not even in the NATO area.
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So legally speaking NATO countries were not bound to act or to respond to any solicit solicitation of the US in that case. I mean they may as uh in terms of bilateral relations that's that's that is possible but the framework of NATO is
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not enough to provide the basis for uh European involvement uh and and to side with the US against Iran. So that's probably also because uh Trump was so disappointed about the EU.
Speaker A
That's probably also the reason why he he he played this game. If it's true, by the way, I I have no idea at this stage, but if it's true, that's pro that's a possible explanation. Let's say yeah, Carl, Donald Trump has decided to
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cancel the attack on Iran, which was supposed to be a massive attack on infrastructure, power grids, everything in Iran. Basically, you know, putting a lot of pressure on Iranian people and then on the government in Iran, which was Iran said that they're going to
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respond the same way. you know, if you're going to attack us, we're going to attack GCC countries together with Israel because the United States said that they're going to attack together with Israel. And without the participation of GCC countries in that
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attack, it was they were not mean a it wasn't possible for them to attack massively without using G Saudi Arabia airspace, Iraqi airspace, all these as you know as they did on February 28th.
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And right now he said he came out said because Iran asked us, Iran contacted us he said Donald Trump said and Middle Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia called me and that's why I decided to cancel the attack on Iran and he said the
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straight of formos is open just after in less than 24 hours you see a new vessel being targeted in this trade of formos just hours ago and we're getting back to the same sort of cycle you know the United States trying to
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penetrate this trade of formos Iran attacking then the United States going to respond But what is important in the whole case is the negotiations between Iran and Oman. It seems that they're getting to some point some sort of you know
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agreement the two sides Iran and Oman with the case of the rad form and what is your understanding of this sort of game or this sort of you know attitude on the part of Donald Trump and how long
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does it take for him you know to get serious about what's going on in your opinion is that serious I'm going to attack because it's been more than I would say 10 times he I'm going to attack massively. I'm going to dissuade
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everything. And then at the last moment he said I decided to cancel that. Yeah.
Speaker A
Well, you know, this is the policy that we have heard uh already uh um I mean even during the first mandate during his first presidential mandate we heard about this and that was repeated many times by him by himself and Pex. This is
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the so-called peace through strength. So this is you put pressure in order to negotiate. In essence, this is in fact this is the revival of a policy that was used by western countries in the late uh 19th century early 20th century. This is
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a so-called gunboat diplomacy. That means that essentially you you demand something to a country and if they don't comply you send your navy and you bomb them uh uh uh from from from your with with your your your naval
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ships. And uh the most the the most famous was this the gunboat of the Yangce where you had British and French and American boats, gunboats cruising along the Yangce in order to force the Chinese to comply with agreements uh
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that the the European wanted them to to do. So this is um in in essence this is not completely new. This is here uh the extreme implementation of that policy if you want. And uh again, this is this is also
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kind of childish because that that reminds me those movies also where you you you promise a a very very uh terrible uh uh punishment to a kid uh in order to make him comply with what you you want him to do. And that's exactly
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the same thing here. He he make promises he is not able to hold essentially this is that because when he says well I will I will crush you I will destroy you okay it can probably make a lot of damage no
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question about this but the damage that will come in return u offset certainly the result of the the first strike so essentially we are in a zero sum game here and um this doesn't make any sense.
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But this is the way uh uh Trump understand diplomacy. Again, this is the this is the art of the deal. This exactly what what he calls the art of the deal. And he could probably have s such kind of behavior uh uh on the real
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estate market in in New York. I mean it was probably not about killing people or destroying things but he could make a lot of pressure on on people in order to achieve what he wanted to achieve if someone doesn't want to sell
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uh some building and you say well okay I put some pressure on the on the seller or the the wouldbe seller and and you achieve eventually that so that's you may and that probably happens very often in the in in trade generally speaking.
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But when it comes to countries that means that you go to war because pressure uh translate into killing of people. So that has severe consequences. Now uh Trump understands part of that. He he he tries to and and probably also because his
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assumption is that Iran is weaker than uh than Iran portrays itself. That's that's the the thing. So he thinks it's weaker than than the is Iranian narrative. As a result, he bluffs. He tried to bluff his way in into this uh this agreement. And
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obviously the Iranians are not bluffing. The Iranians expected such a situation for years now. They have prepared for that. It started physically to uh to have I mean such the conflict really started in 2024 and then you had pause
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if you want until 2025 and so on and but in reality the conflict started already in 2024 meaning that the Iranians have prepared themselves. They have prepared materially, physically, but also mentally and psychologically. They are ready to s to suffer some pain because
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for them, as we said many times on this channel, for them this conflict is existential in nature. So we are here with again with a kind of a delusional uh not even security policy but a foreign policy by Donald Trump that uh
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renounce or doesn't consider the effect of diplomacy and that was exemplified with its the withdrawal of the uh the US in the 20 18 from the JCPOA. So there's no they don't believe in in diplomacy for a simple reason that they the US don't
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even implement their promises and and what they sign and therefore of course they assume that the others do the same and that's the that's the result of it.
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Now what is interesting in the recent development and again there have been contradictory report about this is that the idea of I mean to renounce to this uh new set of strikes or big strike the the the rationale behind this is
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that some um Arab countries have asked Donald Trump not to attack Iran. Um we had a couple of weeks days ago a few um GCC countries namely Bahrain uh Saudi Arabia and Iraq if I'm not wrong that called the Iranians in order to say
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to Iran that they were they didn't want to be part of any aggression of Iran. So they they tried to make sure that they were not approving the attack on Iran.
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Apparently, apparently also these are the same countries that asked Donald Trump to abandon the idea of having a big big strike on on Iran and for a very simple reason is that Iran has already demonstrated that it's capable of
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attacking uh critical infrastructures. We have mentioned on this channel a couple of times the issue of the disselination stations which is a strategic issue for most Arab countries.
Speaker A
Sorry for interrupting you. Iran, the Iranian the foreign ministry spokesperson, he said that over the past 24 hours before Donald Trump announcing he canled the attack, they received numerous calls from the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, and Ukraine stating that they
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will not be part of any war against Iran. Yes. And that this you have in addition you have these ones.
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Absolutely. I forgot to mention that. But uh essentially the they received the same call from some um Gulf countries.
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So and and that also indicates to Donald Trump that there is no unanimity to to have this war against against Iran. Obviously the US is able to exert a lot of pressure on these countries because they depend economically and financially from
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the US to some extent and therefore there's kind this kind of dependency relationship. Uh but doesn't mean that the Arab countries are in favor of such an attack of Iran.
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And Trump start to realize that and that may have an impact. Remember that when uh you had this um you had this talks between uh Donald Trump and um Muhammad bin Salman.
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This was this idea that uh Saudi Arabia would align uh with with the US.
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But when the US said, well, the the precondition to be fully aligned with us is to sign the Abraham uh accord or agreement. Then Saudi Arabia said no. So we see that the the whole issue because the reason why the US intervened against
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Iran was essentially to protect Israel in essence. because of nuclear threat and things like this and so so that's that's the rationale for the US to engage physically in the conflict and now they see that they didn't achieve any
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objective in that sense because now the eur the Gulf countries I mean the the Gulf cooperation council if you want to make it short they understand that first of all Iran is a power a real power a real military
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power that you have to consider. Point one. And second, they noticed also that these Arab countries were misused by the US in order to implement a pro-Israelian policy.
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And I think that is something that I mean the the Arabs felt tricked into this conflict in that sense because from themselves they didn't want to be at war with Iran and remember the the numerous um meeting that we had between
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Iran and Saudi Arabia and other countries of the region in the recent years. meaning that uh the idea of the Gulf countries was to have a more to stabilize the relationship with Iran having a more an appeasement if you want
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with Iran and to cooperate more in in many sense remember also that Saudi Arabia has developed let's say deeper I'm not saying they are deep but they are deeper relationship with China And obviously China is also a partner in in
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a certain sense of Iran. So meaning that obviously the focus of these countries is changing because the uh today and you know that most of these uh these Arab countries in the Gulf they they know that oil has uh is here for a limited
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time, a limited amount of time. It will at one point the all the reserves will be exhausted and they will have to shift to other kind of activities. UAE has been a kind of a um a precursor in that in the sense that
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they started to engage into uh uh internet communication and creating some kind of news hub in Dubai and things like this. So this is kind of a s future oriented uh uh policy um in order to have a better transition
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once oil uh uh fades away and other countries Saudi Arabia namely has have also tried to do the same. So it all and today the country that is the most pro promising in terms of providing technology or support in developing
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technology is China and much better than the US in in fact and for that reason uh the um the Arab countries have realized that being too allied aligned on uh on the US is in fact detrimental for the
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future. it doesn't it's not the solution for the future and therefore they need to have a more nuanced approach to this conflict. They don't want to antagonize the US because they know that it could be extremely expensive in in in many
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ways, but they don't want neither to be ally of the US in a conflict that they didn't want.
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and and and that means in other in in another uh from another point of view if you look at it from the US the US did that for Israel and the result is that these countries today are defiant about
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Israel. They understand that Israel is the starting point of the conflict. the the the the whole destabilization that we see today in the Middle East in fact has as a starting point Israel. Um and that even the US were tricked into the
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conflict by Benjamin Netanyahu. As a result, there is a there is a strong sense in the Middle East that u probably the combination US Israel is not the best combination for the future and for that reason today they and before we
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reach a point where the conflict becomes generalized because so far and we have se witnessed that in the last weeks that uh Iran has concentrated its effort on US assets, military assets, but also civilian assets that support military u
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activities such as for instance you have Amazon. For instance, Amazon has also kind of a web service that provides a very huge computing cap capacity and the um the the the Sentcom and the fifth fleet were relying on the Amazon
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computing capabilities or capacities in order to uh to make uh intelligence, surveillance, uh intu uh artificial intelligence assessments and think like this uh in the region. So meaning that Iran started to strike on military facilities. Obviously we have seen that
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air base and and barracks and command post things like this. But they also have started to attack US uh civilian fat facilities that were supporting military activities.
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And of course once all these uh these targets will be eliminated well the next level of targets will be the countries themselves. I mean the the Arab countries themselves because so far they were it's not their infrastructures that were attacked but US
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infrastructures but again once all these infra US infrastructure will be exhausted or destroyed well the next step is to attack countries in the and Iran has made very clear that if the and since these countries also in some way
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participate in the aggression aggression. I remind you what I remind several times, the resolution 3314 of the UN General Assembly of December 1974 uh that defines the aggression and defines who is an aggressor. uh the Arab countries by allowing the US to use
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their territory and their airspace to attack Iran, they can be considered as aggressors and therefore that would legitimize a a strong response and retaliation from Iran. As a result, these countries might well be have their critical infrastructure destroyed. And again we
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mentioned dissalination stations because once those countries don't have water anymore well the country will not be viable. So uh this is strategically we it becomes existential for these countries and remember that um since these countries were supposed to be
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protected by the US they didn't uh equip or they didn't uh uh organize their forces to respond to the kind of forces that Iran is deploying essentially missile force um they may certainly have anti-aircraft uh uh missile and thing like this but
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again against missile the Iranian missile this is useless and that's the experience that Israel has done so meaning that if Iran would decide to attack the um Arab uh critical infrastructure well obviously that would be another win for Iran as a
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The better solution or the best solution at this stage and I think the Arab countries were right on this. The best solution is to try to find a negotiated solution to go back to diplomacy and to uh to stop a conflict that as everybody
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now understands has no aim. Uh it started with a defined aim that in fact was not even an aim because we knew even before the attack that Iran had no bomb and no uh will to to buy uh not to build
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sorry uh um a nuclear bomb. And today the whole what is at stake is no longer nuclear enrichment and whatever but it's the the the straight of that used to work perfectly before the 20th of February. So we see that we
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by having this kind of erratic approach to conflict we the west the US and Israel have created a situation where you don't know where where it leads to and uh uh that's that's probably the proper time I mean
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that was even before the proper time to stop that and that's essentially what the allies of the US say and remember that if those countries countries refuse to uh let their uh airspace be used by the US. That means that the US cannot do
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anything. I mean they can probably attack from the Indian Ocean from uh the the fleet in the Indian Ocean and and strike with with the tomahawk missiles and things like this if they have some any any tomahawk because as far as we see so far
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there haven't much left but in any case uh if Gulf cooperation council countries refuse use the to allow the use of the airspace that means the US cannot do anything. So it's probably the good time for the US to say okay we won we are
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happy and now we talk with Iranians and probably to implement what was in the MOU and and that's it as to the fra I'm confident that both countries the Iranians and the Omanis I mean they have apparently discussion that went quite
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well Um um the Omanis uh understand what is at stake there. Probably in order just to save face, they will have some kind of a fee, but probably environmental fee or something like that, which in essence would be
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legitimate because of all the problems that are created by these thousands of tankers cruising along the straight for during the year.
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And probably this is this is um this is a good way to stop the whole issue. Of course that will require a lot of communication and public relation in the US to convince people that it was a success. But essentially this is a
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technical issue if you want. But I think that's the and we have mentioned that before well uh at the beginning of the conflict we have said that probably the best way to solve this conflict is to for the US to say that they have
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achieved the objective and that's it and now they stop everything and everything will return to normal. Today we'll see that it will be hard to do so. I mean, it will not the return to normal, but at least they can stop the conflict. It
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will probably not be the return to normal because of the destructions that the US have endured. And I'm not sure the US will I mean again I'm not in the uh planning uh the planning center of the of the
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Pentagon but I can assume that they will probably reassess the scope and the objective of their presence in the Middle East.
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And in my view this is this was a clear example that the the US presence abroad is not a guarantee of security is in fact it has it is a destabilizing factor because of the ambitions that the US
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have run around the around the world and therefore I I don't see here the point of maintaining such a force. I mean my view is that the US should just be there for defending their country as it's perfectly legitimate. They use that
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for their country as does any country in the world and should avoid to impose their presence in some countries. We have seen so many of these conflicts that have been in fact triggered by US presence. So and and probably even even
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today the the there is a question of this US presence. So I think that's a little bit what I I I see in this situ in this situation.
Speaker A
Carl, you you've raised a very crucial point in my opinion, which is the US presence and Financial Times reported two days ago, it was yesterday, they confirmed that the United States has withdrawn its presence from Kuwait and Bahrain after Iranian attacks. We we are
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witnessing the same thing happening in the northern part of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan. They're basically removing all those, you know, air defense system, patriot systems from that area and maybe putting them in Israel. But after all you don't see there is no in the west
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Asia I would say there is no irrational player at at this particular moment that would attack you know you you remember when Iraq has decided the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein attacked Iran attack Kuwait attack multiple countries in West Asia
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those irrational player don't exist today and in Europe the I would say well they were sorry to interrupt you they were not irrational completely irrational. Remember that the uh Iraq was supported by the west when attacking Iran and strongly supported by by the by
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the west and namely France and the US in particular. So uh this was not I mean obviously Saddam played the game for it was kind of a proxy war if you want. uh they were misused by the the the West to attack
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Iran. And we still have that. Don't don't forget that we have now French and US forces and even European other UN European forces training the Kurds in order to attack Iran. I mean, you have those um those uh Kurdish separatist movement
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that have uh training bases in in the Iraqi Kurdistan and they have kind of a let's say territory, we can put it that way, a territory or client territory in Iran.
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And the idea was to to use those militias in order to destabilize Iran. And if we look at those um riots that happened uh late December last year and early January this year, these were mostly uh Kurds that were uh uh armed,
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paid and trained by Western special forces and armies in the Kurdish reg. they were infiltrated into Iran to create those riots. And uh if you look at the map of all these riots, you will see it was not in the in the central
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part of Iran, but mostly in the north where you had the Kurds. So um the Kurds are a very good client of the West because they expect to have their free Kurdistan and uh uh in exchange of having a kind of a political
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recognition. They offer their service to the West, you know, to destabilize Iran. So we are still in this in this uh in this scenario. Well, it's not as obvious as during the Iraqi Iran war because here it was a conventional war uh waged
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by conventional armies. But when it comes to the use or misuse of Kurdish uh separatists or independentists depending who they are and which movement you are talking about there there is about a good dozen of movement that operates
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uh just on the border between Iraq and Iran and partly within Iran itself and who are funded, equipped and trained by uh by European countries. And you had in March, for instance, you had a a French military uh
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killed in in an attack close to Heril and they were training those uh those separatist movement designed to operate in in Iran. So we still have that. So the and and that's also when we talk about this there's not much
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irrationality in war you know there's not much even the attack I mean I don't want to discuss this because it is out of the scope of the current discussion but even the attack of Salamisan against Kuwait was not totally irrational.
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uh if you go if you dig into the substance of of what was at stake at this stage, this was not irrational. We portrayed that as irrational because for us and and you you you notice that every time we have an enemy, it's always
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irrational. Iran is irrational, Palestinians are irrational, Russia is irrational, China, they're always irrational. In fact, if you go deeper into the these conflicts, you will see that at at the core of all these conflict, you have a western action that
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started the whole thing every time. And that's that's a very sad uh conclusion. But I I studied uh uh when I wrote my book uh governing by fake news, I studied all this config. I noticed that there is not a single conflict I mean
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major conflict I'm not talking about small tribal conflict somewhere in Africa or elsewhere but if you talk about major conflict those conflict that you have on the headlines of our papers and things like that all these conflicts were in fact triggered by some western
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action and and and because we we don't understand these countries Because we think and and you hear that very often, they understand only violence. You know, the Iranians understand only violence, only of force. You cannot talk to them.
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And that's the same with with Palestinians. It's the same with whoever. I mean, they understand only force or violence.
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And therefore we have to um we have this kind of u of behavior that discard that.
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So we don't need to explain the the fundamentals of the conflict. We don't have to explain. We just say they are irrational. Nobody is irrational. We are always pulling the strings everywhere.
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And that's when I talk about the military presence, it's probably not only the military presence, by the way, because besides a military presence, you have the clandestine covert presence in those countries that's that create the same harm. We should stop trying to
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influence those countries just using force. We we have seen that and that's very true with Iran, very true with Saudi Arabia, that's very true with the Palestinians. We have seen that those people are not only ready to talk and
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negotiate, but they are extremely able to negotiate and talk. So meaning that if we want to achieve something, the the negotiation is the key word here. And the same applies to Russia, to China. We we always think that we can
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manage the situation through sanction, through coercion, through deployment of force, through uh uh selling weapons and things like this. But we consistently deny every single possibility of negotiating, talking and dialogue. And we we it's not just we we we simply deny
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this. We are not even prepared for that. Remember the European Union just a couple of weeks ago when it was suggested that probably would be a good idea for the Europe to start engaging negotiation with Russia and and and
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Miss Kayakalas had a very strange and very fascinating answer that she says well we we we have to discuss first what we can talk about with them. So they don't know even what they would like to talk. They don't know
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exactly what they could expect from a negotiation. So they are not even ready to talk.
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and and that's that in my view exemplifies the way the west is considering uh its security policy first of all because I remind you that security policy regardless of the country regardless of which even the security policy of the
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European Union for instance security policy is always a combination between foreign policy and security policy and uh and when you have and national security policy I mean so meaning that you can use both but the first layer of
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your national security policy is always diplomacy that's where you start and if that fail then you can come with another layer that might be the military force and military policy and thing like this but we never try even the uh the first
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layer of diplomacy. We don't try to solve problem with diplomacy. And that's I think this is a very sad evolution that we see in the west since I would say at least 30 years that we have completely forgotten about diplomacy to
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solve problem. We always go to uh to bomb people, you know, and and the what what happens is that well people regardless of who they are, regardless of what they think, regardless of their religion, regardless of their faith,
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you don't like to be bombed and as a result, you engage in other kind of warfare and that starts to be very unpleasant. And and and so the problem is that today with Iran, the West start to understand
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that it cannot simply bomb people without expecting any reply and that's a major uh uh evol development in the recent I would say international security because so far we bombed Iraq Iraq and they were not able to respond. So that that was
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okay. You could bomb Libya, you could bomb Syria, you could bomb whoever Afghanistan. They had no resources to respond to that. So it was easy an easy thing with Iran. Suddenly the think becomes quite different because Iran has
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the ability of responding. And it's interesting by the way when you just mentioned just a couple of minutes ago you said three countries called uh called uh uh um Iran to tell Iran that they were not part of the attack,
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namely Great Britain, uh um Bulgaria and Ukraine. Remember what we said last week that Ukraine attacked a ship, a a cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.
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And that was deliberate because you know this is not Caspian Sea is not in the uh uh uh um in the area that is critical for Ukraine. So they did that purposely and and and now they say well we are not
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part of the attack because Iran told Ukraine well we'll we'll respond to that and remember that Kief still is within range of our missiles and and and that shows that again Iran is Ukraine instead of trying to have
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good relation and things like that they did exactly the same game as Israel try to adopt the enemies of the United States that's exactly what Israel has done there is no rationale between the animosity or antagonism or however you call it
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between Israel and Iran there is no territorial claim There is no religious claim. There is no there is nothing even considering the issue of ET Israel which is the greater Israel even if you look at the Bible it
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doesn't extend to Iran. So there is no point there is no claim in in in geographic geographical terms there is no basically no reason why Iran should be a competitor of Israel. There's no rationale behind this. So what Israel has no reason to be an enemy
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of Iran. The only reason is that by adopting Iran as an enemy, it adopts the same enemy as the US. And that gives this rationale for Israel to have the US being permanently involved in the region. That's the whole rationale
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behind this. Israel wants the US permanently in military invol militarily involved in the region and that's the that's the that's the whole game of Israel. That's why and you may remember that just a couple of days ago the uh the Israel is I mean that was um
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Bajel Smotri who said that the current situation is perfect for Israel. Israel is no longer attacked by Iran.
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Iran and the US exchange missile and they trade their their strikes and that's fine. That's exactly he said that's exactly what we expected to have uh uh the US involved in a conflict in the region with Iran. Period. That's
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exactly what Israel wanted and that's exactly the reason why Netanyahu tricked Donald Trump into the conflict and Donald Trump since he's not obviously aware of because I assume that the US intelligence knows the situation much better than Trump does and probably have
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has a more realistic approach to the actual uh strength of Iran. And as we know, the US intelligence tried to discourage Trump to attack Iran earlier this year, but Trump didn't want to listen. He was he has so a huge
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self-confidence and an exaggerated understanding of what he can do or what he can achieve and therefore they it started this this this war. But again this is just an emotional approach. This is irrational by the way. The west is
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irrational but the people in this country are far from irrational. So that's the I mean when I say the west I include Israel by the way but because you see that Israel behave not like a Middle Eastern country or a people that
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has a Middle Eastern tradition or culture. We see that the Israel is a is a country that has a pure western tradition, a pure western way of behaving and therefore they are equally irrational than what you have in Europe
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and and in the US. So there is no mystery. But if you look I mean I I have been in those countries uh and and when you talk to people when you talk to military of those people I know several
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military from all these countries and their understanding of the situation is much more rational than many officers in the west to be honest. They have a a very sober assessment of the situation.
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They know exactly who the US are, who Israel is, who the Iran is and things like that. And they have an extremely realistic understanding of the situation. Don't underestimate these people. They might not have a big battle experience and things like this. Okay?
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But when it comes to their assessment of the situation, they understand the situation much better than many uh uh countries in the west. I mean if not all of them.
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Yeah. Thank you so much for being with us today. Great pleasure as always. That was my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you.
Topics:CeutaSpainmigration crisisSchengen AgreementEuropean bordersIranMiddle East conflictUS foreign policyKurdish forcesIsrael-Palestine
